Multimedia services for audiovisual entertainment are competitively provided by digital television (DTV) in the broadcast and television field, by internet protocol television (IPTV) in the conventional telecommunications field, and by music television (MTV) in the mobile communications field. As people increasingly demand enhanced audiovisual entertainment, the multimedia services provided by these competitors are incessantly enriched. Under such intensified competition, service operators at various fields are not satisfied with providing video-on-demand (VOD) value-added multimedia services in the traditional sense, but are instead proactively striving to search for differentiation and diversification of multimedia services, and are trying at the same time to lower the operation risk of multimedia services, lower the restriction to the application environments of multimedia services, improve the operation capability of differentiating multimedia services, shorten the period in introducing new multimedia services, optimize the interactive experiences, enhance the safety and reliability of operation of multimedia services, and thereby strengthen the competitiveness of multimedia services. In such backgrounds, service operators construct certain multimedia service systems by themselves to provide multimedia services, and cooperate with multimedia service providers/content providers to realize operation of multimedia services. In such cooperative operations of multimedia services, the service operators provide network and subscriber resources and provide support for the operation of multimedia services, and the multimedia service providers/content providers construct service servers to provide new multimedia services. Gain of the multimedia services is settled and divided between network companies and multimedia service providers/content provides according to the traffic of multimedia services, to thereby realize sharing of the gain of the multimedia services.
Networking is different due to different network environments in the prior art, and the networking is mainly the bidirectional network and the unidirectional network. The bidirectional network means in this context the presence of both the uplink channel and the downlink channel, while the unidirectional network means in this context the mere presence of the downstream channel. These two modes are respectively described below.
Networking of bidirectional network in the prior art is as shown in FIG. 1, in which a subscriber management system (SMS) or a service and business support system (BSS) is responsible for the operation management of the multimedia services, a service middleware is responsible for multimedia service management and the multimedia services adaptation, an interactive electronic program guide (EPG) server is responsible for presentation of the multimedia services as well as for access of the multimedia service control request sent by a subscriber via a set-top box, a service server is responsible for providing the multimedia services, and the set-top box and the television set are playing devices of the multimedia services.
Currently available multimedia services supported by networking of the bidirectional network are mainly divided into the following two parts. The first part includes VOD multimedia services, TV video on demand multimedia services based on live channels, time-shift multimedia services based on live channels, and network personal video recorder multimedia services based on live channels. This part of the multimedia services makes use of the set-top box to access in the multimedia service control request, and carries out control of the multimedia services through interaction between the set-top box terminal and the video server and interaction between the set-top box terminal and the service middleware. The second part includes online shopping multimedia services, advertisement multimedia services, and online gaming multimedia services, etc., and usually also makes use of the set-top box to access in the multimedia service control request, and carries out the operation through direct interaction between the set-top box and the corresponding service server.
As the inventors have found, the multimedia service control flow in the existing bidirectional network is greatly affected by the application environments of the multimedia services (such as the type of the network and the configuration of the set-top box, etc.) and the inherent characteristics of the multimedia services (such as the types and forms of expression of the multimedia services), and it is hence costly to realize the cooperative operation of plural types of multimedia services, resulting in the detriment to the development of multimedia services and the subsequent expansion of new multimedia services. With respect to the second part of existing multimedia services in the bidirectional network, since the multimedia service control is carried out through direct interaction between the set-top box and the service server without the necessary operation control and resources control on the multimedia services, it is disadvantageous to protect the interests of the subscribers and the service operators in the case of cooperative operation of multimedia services between service operators and multimedia service providers/content providers, and it is also difficult to control the risk of operation of multimedia services. The multimedia service control flows differ greatly with regard to different multimedia services, and the level of reuse of the multimedia service control flows is relatively low, thereby delaying the introduction of new multimedia services to certain degrees. With regard to different multimedia services, the operation procedures and result notification information of the multimedia services obviously differ, and this affects the experience of interaction of the multimedia services to certain degrees.